The frequent repetition of words of reproof and acts of punishment has a further disadvantage that the older children are quick to practise both upon their younger brothers and sisters.  There is something wrong in the nursery where the lives of the little ones are made a burden to them by the constant repression of the older children.  But although set and artificial punishments are as a general rule to be used but sparingly, the mother can see to it that the child learns by experience that a foolish or careless act brings its own punishment.  If, for example, a child breaks his toy, or destroys its mechanism, she need not be so quick in mending it that he does not learn the obvious lesson.  If the baby throws his doll from the perambulator, in sheer joy at the experience of imparting motion to it, she need not prevent him from learning the lesson that this involves also some temporary separation from it.  Throughout all his life he is to learn that he cannot eat his cake and have it too.  The use of rewards is also beset with difficulties.  Their coming must be unexpected and occasional.  They must never degenerate into bribes, to be bargained for upon condition of good behaviour.  Rewards which take the form of special privileges are best.

The aesthetic sense of children develops very early.  From the very beginning of the second year they take delight in new clothes, and in personal adornment of all sorts.  They show evident pleasure if the nursery acquires a new picture or a new wall-paper.  They have pronounced favourites in colours.  Even tiny children show dislike of dirt and all unpleasant things.  Personal cleanliness should be clearly desired by all children.  A sense of what is pleasant and what is unpleasant should be encouraged.  Any delay in its appearance is apt to imply a backwardness in development of mind or of body.  Only children who are tired out by physical illness or by nervous exhaustion will lie without protest in a dirty condition.

Affection and the attempt to express affection appear clearly marked even in the first year.  Too much kissing and too much being kissed is apt to spoil the spontaneity of the child’s caresses.  We must not, however, expect to find any trace in the young child of such a complex quality as unselfishness or self-abnegation.  The child’s conception of his own self has but just emerged.  It is his single impulse to develop his own experience and his own powers, and his attitude for many years is summed up in the phrase:  “Me do it.”  We must not expect him to resign his toys to the little visitor, or the little visitor to cease from his efforts to obtain them.  In all our dealings with children we must know what we may legitimately expect from them, and judge them by their own standards, not by those of adult life.  We cannot expect self-sacrifice in a child, and, after all, when we come to think of it, obedience is but another name for self-sacrifice.  If the tiny child could possibly obey all the behests